Heavyweight Boxing’s Road to Nowhere

Saturday’s one-sided contest between Poland’s Tomasz Adamek & Dr. Iron Fist aka Vitali Klitschko was yet another sobering aide memoire of the impasse the glamour less heavyweight division has reached. The chasm between the Ukrainian siblings and the talent shy pack remains as hopelessly ample as ever, perversely given the advancing ages of K2, it indeed displays threatening signs of widening further.

Vitali Klitschko had too much of everything for the best heavyweight in the world not related to him in Adamek.

The adjective robotic is often deployed to portray the younger Klitschko’s pugilistic character & production but having been presented with little alternative but to watch the fight with the Polish commentary switched off (that is in the objectivity heightening imposition of silence) I was for long spells the victim of nightmarish flashbacks of that most ill-fated of rock music’s excursions into the absurd – Mr. Roboto.

Appreciation is due to Adamek for at least attempting to dethrone, well, for manfully pitching up & doing what he could against an imposing opponent whose natural endowments of superior reach, height & general physicality rendered this something south of a factual examination of boxing ability. Adamek was always (and was always going to be) outmatched but unlike David Haye remained game; attempting though always in vein in the face of near insurmountable dollops of cold hard reality & piston like jabs. He went down with a semblance of valour, a modicum of gallantry.

Where this latest episode in quasi-competitiveness leaves the heavyweight division though becomes an increasingly troubling self-evident truth. A casual look down the major sanctioning bodies’ ranking lists hardly fills one with optimism for the immediate to medium term prospects of the sport’s former marquee division.

Alexander Povetkin. Well now, when your own trainer doesn’t think you’re ready to take on either of the heavyweight Siamese twin kingpins and you were born in the 1970s then you’ll excuse mere objective casual bystanders for questioning your credentials as a legitimate current or future champion. The WBA’s contemporary Regular Heavyweight Champion of the World possesses all of the authenticity of a three dollar bill.

The last, save – perhaps, in hindsight – one great heavyweight champion & certainly the last dose of unadulterated adrenalin the weight class mustered; one Iron Mike Tyson poignantly stated of his final excursion inside a professional boxing ring, “I’m not going to disrespect the sport anymore by losing to this calibre of fighter.” Is it hyperbolic of one to at this stage of the heavyweight division’s long downward spiral echo those sentiments about the division as a whole?